14 DAY TRIAL // From time to time it happens that softwares really look great and this includes music players. And if I just add that this ?great looking? is a GUI which combines traditional XP themes and Mac ideas, things get really hot, because these two backgrounds cannot but parent a very good appearance.
Adding more features to this could be an attempt to hit the ?media center? region in the total amount of audio software, but adding the ?studio? particle just isn't enough. Nevertheless, the looks remain and the functions remain as well; all that's left to see is exactly what's going on.
The Looks
MP3 WAV Studio is a rather good mixture of Mac and XP graphics, as I was telling you before. It has a very light and even beautiful GUI and I daresay it's one of the nicest interfaces for a software whose primary function is that of a music player: rounded corners and buttons, a clean and very neat array of functional elements which, despite the compactness of the frontend, do not confuse nor make operation harder than usual.
To my greatest surprise, this version of the MP3 WAV Studio does not sport any color schemes and any skins, but I guess that such a nice appearance is good enough such as to be heavily promoted and backed by not offering an alternative. The silver and iron-grey coloring makes a very readable contrast with the black text when it comes to everything except the playlist and the main info screen, which are black with white text.
All over the MP3 WAV Studio's GUI a very calm and relaxed feeling rules: everything is very simple and intuitive, especially those awesome animated icons atop of the main window which grant you access to the additional features (rip, burn, convert and mp3 sites). They are small but look great as they are also hi-res animated icons which move as you hover the mouse on them. Menus are also very clean and well-written, so the overall operation of the MP3 WAV Studio is easy to learn in just a few steps.
All the additional modules sport the same good-looking interfaces with very handy and usable buttons and menus and everything is smooth, eye-comforting and quickly to read. Should this be an interface for a professional program (the type you spend many hours a day in front of) I guess it would be a hit: no eye-strain and absolutely nothing futile in the graphic design. One minus would be the playlist whose size is fixed thus being a bit hard to use with large amounts of tracks loaded.
The main info display shows the elapsed time down to hundredths of a second, the bitrate and frequency and 2 very nice FFT screens, one for each channel. The professional-grade setting here is that you can choose from various windows-types and resolutions; nevertheless, these windows are small and they?ll remain small whatever you'd try.
The Works
First of all, I hate that MP3 WAV Studio does not run with any shortcuts, it does not have any text written in the taskbar item and will not go to the system tray. Having mentioned these, it's time to move further...
The EQ featured in this version works very well, too bad you won't find the triggering button, except maybe by pure try-and-see techniques or sheer luck: there is nothing on that button to state that the button toggles between playlist and EQ-mode. And if we are at the playlist chapter I must say that it supports file(s) dragging but no folder-adding this way, therefore is half-functional, if I may say so. It also displays the artist and song name, time, type of file, size AND the local path; but being that small, this feature is almost useless.
The seekbar does not ?jump?: you just have to drag the cursor forward or backwards, as you want to seek; and don't think that arrow-keys will help you because they won't. All they do is move the highlight up or down in the playlist.
The rip module works also nice and fast, featuring CDDB support and encoding with LAME 3.91, thus giving you a lot of options to choose from, including the high/lowpass filtering and the additional switches in a command line which will output your WAV, WMA, MP3 or OGG files exactly how you want.
The CD-burning module works for audio CDs only but has fairly extensive options, even for RW discs. I guess you all know what a CD burner does and how it works, so I won't be spending any more words here but rather speak about the Converter which is a pretty good module, allowing you to swing between various audio formats of which I'll just name MP+, G721 and MPC. It will batch-process so you can have your files ?changed? in a short time.
Finally, the last module is called the MP3 Sites and I guess there is no need to tell you much about what it does: it will present you a list of web locations where you can either buy digital music or browse for free mp3 collections. With just a click you will be able to reach notorious sites such as IUMA, Napster, Audiogalaxy and MP3.com and thus get your favorite MP3 music. One very interesting and even handy feature is that - as you click a website from the list - in the pane below a short description is displayed, so you don't even have to visit that location to get to know how things are going. For example, you will instantly learn the prices or fees for some sites or if there are any freeware MP3s available at a certain location. Useful indeed!
The Good
What's really good about the MP3 WAV Studio is the fact that it looks far better than other similar products and the functionality isn't impeded at all by this feature. A very decent player (with many other features) for those who are not very much into professional programs or who don't want to constantly tweak buttons and settings.
The Bad
Thinking that MP3 WAV Studio is a software for the rather ?easy? kind of listeners, the lack of shortcuts may not be such a drama. One thing though is not that good: the fact that MP3 WAV Studio has a very fixed size and the playlist tends to be a bit difficult to use.
The Truth
For those that are not looking for the absolute player, the MP3 WAV Studio is just OK: player, burner, ripper and converter, all for a very good price of just under 30 USD. Not a tool for the ?inquisitive? kind of listeners, nevertheless a good one.
See the screenshots below to get a better idea on what MP3 WAV Studio is like:
